Super Frenchie Bugs

One thing I'm discovering about living here, it seems like the cold viruses that go around in the winter are slightly different than the ones that my body is trained to defeat. I have caught one of the Super Frenchie bugs that is making the rounds in Paris right now. We're having the last few beautiful crisp clear Fall days before the temperature nosedives, and I'm spending them with my nose pressed up against the glass, coughing into the endless stream of tissues. ......sigh......

We're finished with travel and visitors for a while, and the tourist crowds are definitely dropping off. That means we can sneak into the Louvre or even (gasp!) go to Musee d'Orsay. Paris is really nice at this time of year. You can enjoy some clear (but cooler) weather, and enjoy some sights sans tourist mobs.

But first I've got to get rid of this cough.

Fill'er up!

Side note- I've taken the plunge and enabled comments on my blog, so now you can leave comments on entries. Enjoy.

So, sometimes you run across things in Europe that are a little different.

This picture is one of those things. First off, look at the tiny little car, it holds one adult, and a child seat behind it. It's the same size as mopeds, and is electric powered.

Also notice on the left, it's an electric recharging station. You swipe a card at the machine, and it tells you which plug to plug into. We ran into this on a back alley in Florence. The electric mopeds are a dream come true, they are very very quiet, which you really need in Florence. Moped noise pollution here is a problem. 

Italia pictures, finally...

Sarah and I took a great two week trip to Italy at the end of September. We went to Venice, Verona, and Florence.

Venice was beautiful, as long as you stayed away from the "Follow the Umbrella" tourist groups. The back waterways were great to explore and get lost in. There were endless interesting photos waiting to be taken, and it was generally quiet and relaxed. Around San Marco/Rialto was a different story. (insert rant on cruise ship tour groups here). It was interesting watching Venetians do things by boat that we typically see done by truck: Uhaul, mail boat, furniture delivery, laundry pickup. We really enjoyed Murano, where they let you wander into glass blowing workshops and watch the guys work. We will go back in a few years during low low low season, and try to see San Marco's interior, we just couldn't face the long long line this time.

We kicked back in Verona for a few days, it was a great place to just soak in Italy. We didn't do the "Romeo and Juliet" sites, we did tour the colosseum, linger in sidewalk cafes, and seek out a few interesting churches. We also took a break from Italian food, we had Japanese and pigged out at a Brazilian steakhouse.

In Florence we met my parents for a week. It was very nice to spend a week there, and devote larger time slots to visiting things. We were able to spend a lot more time in the Uffizi this time, the Bellini's were really great. And we also spent plenty of time roaming the Boboli gardens. Plus it was fun to hang out with my parents, we don't get to see them very often these days.

I've sorted through pictures, and posted them at

http://suzyinparis.free.fr

This is the second trip to Italy we've made this year, we just can't seem to get enough of the place.

Nuit Blanche 2006

Paris has a yearly Nuit Blanche ("Sleepless night"), a free city wide Modern art festival put on by the gay mayor. All over the city there are really bizarre art installations. We went to a few. Sarah was fighting a cold, so we didn't stay out all night.

The French seem to be much more willing to accept and promote bizarre modern art, and it it kind of interesting to try to be more open to it myself.

The picture here is an interactive exhibit. Hundreds of thousands of hard candies are wrapped in extremely reflective foil and spilled on the floor, and bright bright lights are overhead. My picture is showing about half the floor area. The "interactive" part is that viewers can take a piece of candy and thus the 'art' changes as it disappears. I just think it makes a mess for the street cleaners.

We also saw gargantuan mobiles of huge (12 feet diameter) balls rotating in the courtyard of City Hall, and Place de Concorde lit up in cool blue.


FYI, I'll be filling in some details of our Italy trip and post some pics from it in about a week. I took so many pictures of Venice, I'm having trouble weeding through them.